


Driving Lessons

by complexcraziness



Category: Merlin (TV), Merlin (TV) RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-14
Updated: 2012-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-16 06:55:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/complexcraziness/pseuds/complexcraziness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I...” Bradley’s broad hands gripped the steering wheel confidently, the warn fake leather felt wonderfully familiar and warm under his grip. “...am going to teach you how to drive, Mr. Colin Morgan.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Driving Lessons

**Author's Note:**

> A short fic I've had for a while, but finished recently and made more up to date. Dedicated to 'Suddenlyalone' for her 16th birthday.
> 
> Sorry if I got anything geographically or technically wrong - (It's been 3 years since I was last in Wales and a year since I was in England and I'm still learning to drive myself!)

“ _I...”_ Bradley’s broad hands gripped the steering wheel confidently, the warn fake leather felt wonderfully familiar and warm under his grip “...am going to teach you how to drive, Mr. Colin Morgan.” 

Bradley’s passenger seemed to suppress a frenzied bolt of panic as his gaze was suddenly averted from studying the countryside out of the window.

“What?” Exclaimed Colin, if Bradley had not been an excellent model driver, he would have taken his eyes away from the M4 and would have noticed his boyfriend’s wide-eyed and near comical expression of sudden panic.

“Yes, I’m going to teach you. That way I won’t have to spend half of my weekend ferrying you back and forward to London.” Colin was about to say something, and seemingly thought better of it, his mouth hung formed over a word for a second or two before he clamped it shut.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong.” Continued Bradley “I don’t mind spending time with you, I just wish my hands weren’t quite so preoccupied with the steering wheel, and could be engaged in  _other activities.”_ He smirked a sideways glance, even without doing so he knew Colin’s cheeks would be flushed at that statement.

“So, first thing tomorrow, driving lessons, me and you. It’ll be a blast.” He smacked down on the accelerator as if to reiterate the point. The motorway wasn’t too crowded at 7am (7am!) on a Sunday morning ( _Sunday Morning!)._ Buying that damn flat in Cardiff together sounded like a good idea at the time, a way to get away from the oppressiveness of London, and there was less chance of being set upon by those… what are they called again?  _Fangirls?_ Especially now the rumors of him and Colin being together actually has some truth to them.

It all was going well until about the 7th pre dawn taxi service that Bradley had run to get Colin into London for an audition, or theatre rehearsal, or BBC meeting. Admittedly, some of the time it involved Bradley as well, and those he didn’t mind so much, but really, when he couldn’t spend his Sunday mornings in bed with Colin, the worst possible alternative was to be stuck in the same space as him for 3 or so hours, unable to, well,  _touch_ , and talking being relatively off limits too because most of the time he wasn’t fully awake until well into England.

 

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Colin managed after a while. “I mean, I’ve tried before… my mother tried… I’m not the best driver, you know that.” Bradley  _did_ know that, but he was also arrogant.

“It’s a challenge, a hard one at that, but one I know I can win. I am after all, an excellent driver” He smiled, not at Colin, but at the road, because  _god wouldn’t it be awful if I crashed or something after saying that._

Colin snorted and stretched lazily as best he could in the car seat.

“Okay.” He said with some tentativeness. “Okay you can teach me, but, only if you don’t shout at me,or get frustrated. You know what you’re like when you’re frustrated. You’ll get mad at me when I turn left instead of right and storm out of the car.”

“I  _will_ not!”

“You probably would.”

“Well, I’ll try my best. You have my word.”

 

The meeting with the BBC was dull and completely uneventful. Definitely  _not_ worth missing a Sunday morning lie-in (especially if Colin was involved in this). It was all singing papers about copyright and disclaimers now that filming for  _Merlin,_ was done and dusted for another year.

By the time they’d finished, passing the time in the conference room with an elaborate game of  _footsies_ (that Bradley argued he’d won but Colin said  _footsies_ wasn’t a game that could be won) as well as one of the favorites ‘ _how long can we fuck each other with out eyes until someone notices’_ (none of the BBC public relations team explicitly noticed but some gave the two some funny looks), it was too late to drive back so they booked into a hotel in London. The BBC had gone ahead and booked two single rooms for them, which they’d taken graciously, retiring for the night separately. This arrangement lasted for approximately 7 minutes, Bradley was the first to give in, knocking on Colin’s door as he was cleaning his teeth, entering with a quick glance down the hallway. If anyone  _had_ been watching, they might have noticed Bradley did not leave Colin’s room until morning.

 

“You want me to WHAT?” If Colin’s eyes could grow any bigger, and his mouth could drop any lower – oh wait, no that’d be physically impossible.

“I want  _you_  to drive  _me_  back to Cardiff.” Said Bradley for the third time, patiently.

“No-no, no, no, not in a thousand years, you sir, are crazy.”

“What’s wrong? You have your L-plate, and you agreed to me teaching you to drive, so, why wait?”

“Why-I. I mean I agreed because I thought  _teaching_ me would involved I don’t know, starting of slow! Not,  _here you go Colin here’s my car drive me back to Cardiff, you might kill someone on the way but who cares, right?”_ Colin exaggerated Bradley’s upper-class tone, to Bradley’s amusement.

“I do not even sound like that.”  
“You do and you know it.” Colin scoffed, he’d been looking forward to a relaxing drive back to Cardiff, perhaps some time to go over some of those scripts he’d brought along, and maybe stopping for brunch along the way. Now he felt the palms of his hands growing clammy and his heart rate climbing steadily because he knew Bradley would  _not_ back down.

“It’ll be fine, I’ll be with you the whole time, telling you what to do. Once we’re out of London that’s the hard part done.” He smiled that smile he knew made Colin weak at the knees. The one it was impossible for him to say no to.

“Did you only have sex with me last night so I’d be in a good mood with you this morning? Because you know what that face does to me.”

“What?” Bradley looked around the empty street in a panic, needlessly.

“Fine. Come on. But you have to tell me what to do every step of the way, okay? And if we crash I’m blaming you.”

 

It took close to an hour to get out of London. Most of that was actually spent in one spot, the parking space outside of the hotel because Colin kept stalling the car (well why did Bradley have to have a bloody manual?). There was a lot of “I can’t do it! I just can’t!” alongside flailing of limbs and exaggerated hand movements. Bradley had to bite his tongue not to laugh half the time because, well, okay Colin was a terrible driver but he honestly wasn’t doing too bad.

 

“Shit. Fuck. Shit, shit, shit, shit, bloody hell. No!” Was one memorably and truly inspiring quote of Colin’s that Bradley promised to get embodied and hung above their fireplace. In all honesty, Bradley hadn’t seen the cab pulling out of the driveway  _either._

At about 10.30, Colin had ignored Bradley’s instructions to turn right, and had gone straight through the roundabout (almost literally), going 50 miles per hour in first gear. They pulled up outside a small café and service station to try and work out where they were now (Colin has refused to stop and turn around saying he was ‘on a roll’ over and over in a triumphant and somewhat impressive singing voice)

 

Bradley let out a large breath of air as his car shuddered to a halt (Colin forgetting to take it out of gear). Colin looked at him, wide-eyed with exaggerated horror. “You were scared! Of my driving! Oh my god.”

“No, no.” Bradley back tracked “Just… concentrating, on teaching you.”

“You did not teach me. You told me what streets to take and  _4 th gear Colin, no that’s 3rd, that’s 3rd! Colin look out for that cyclist. _I’ll  have you know I saw that cyclist before you even did.”

Bradley mouth curled into a warm smile before he unclasped his seat belt to lean forward, tilting Colin’s chin into a short kiss.

“Coffee? And something to eat?”

“Sure.”

“I better not eat anything, I might throw it all up with you winding all over the road.” Bradley was out the door quickly before Colin had a chance to throw something at him. There was a fair bit to chose from, the car’s floor littered with paper coffee mugs and screwed up pieces of paper.

 

The bagels they bought were stale and tasteless but the coffee was coffee. So it was alright.

“I think we just need to keep going down here.” Said Bradley, intensely studying google maps on his iphone. “And it joins the… motorway… somewhere…I think.”

Colin just smirked before both of them were jolted forward violently, spilt coffee and bagel crumbs being propelled as far forward as the windshield.

“Ah.” Colin  was staring at the steering wheel like it was a puppy he’d kicked by accident.

“You left it in gear you idiot.” Bradley managed affectionately whilst wiping coffee from his jeans. “Put it into neutral, turn the car on, and then into  _reverse._ We don’t want to go crashing through the shop window.”

“Yes alright, alright.” Colin spun the wheel sufficiently enough to almost knock over an old lady, but they were out of the parking lot a lot quicker than the hotel car park.

 

In all honesty, Bradley should have preempted that Serven Bridge might have been a struggle for Colin. He slowed the car in jagged and uneven jolts to stop too far forward to reach the window of the toll booth. He then had to put the car back into reverse, going back inch by inch until his foot slipped and he went too far back again. This process was repeated just shy of 5 times.

“Bloody bridge, what kind of a name is that anyway? Severn. Bloody Wales. Not attached to bloody England. Bloody car.” Were some of Merlin’s less explicit mumblings as he struggled in the surge of traffic going over the bridge.  And then came something that perhaps Bradley should have expected, but definitely did not preempt, the mother of all traffic jams, stretching, allegedly, according to the radio, all the way back to Cardiff.

 

“Balls.” Said Bradley, kicking the dashboard from underneath, as the car rolled forward a little.

“It might be clearing.” Said Colin in a mock hopeful tone “We’ve moved 3 inches in half an hour now.” The sea of cars stretched further than the horizon, which was incredibly depressing. What was even more depressing was that there was nothing in the car to do, listen to, look at, play with (except Colin, but he was focusing, white knuckled, on the unmoving queue of cars.) Nothing.

 

“Take this exit.”

“What?”

“Take this fucking exit or I will take control of the car. By force.”  
“Okay, okay, jeez, see this is what I meant by you getting frustrated.”

“I am not sitting in that goddamn traffic jam for another hour, Colin. I think we can get around on these country roads… somehow.”

To Colin’s credit, he maneuvered the car rather well, considering he had to get across 3 lanes of almost stationary traffic in order to get the car off the motorway.  It felt liberating to finally drive over 5 miles per hour. Although that didn’t last long when the road quickly gave way to unsealed gravel bordered by dense hedges and paddocks of speckled sheep on either side.

“Perhaps you want to.. you know… do that thing with google maps?”

“My phone went flat while I was playing  _Temple Run_ in the traffic jam.” Bradley said with regret at they winded the car through country lane after country lane. Colin, admittedly, was no the most coordinated or savvy when it came to directions, but he was fairly certain that A. there had been no signs of civilization for about 45 minutes now (unless you counted sheep and the occasional old farm house) and B. they seemed to be going in the opposite direction to Cardiff.

“This is like ‘ _The real Merlin and Arthur’_ all over a-bloody-gain.” Mumbled Bradley, truly pissed off. Colin just snorted, smiling despite himself.

“You do remember that was the first time we… you know.”

“I do remember. The only highlight of the whole bloody thing.”

Colin dimpled and let his hands relax on the steering wheel a little, he felt more confident now. In all honesty this drive hadn’t gone too bad, considering his past luck with cars and driving and wheelie bins (don’t go there.) It was now nearing nightfall and with no means of navigating, or finding civilization on these desperately and disconcertingly confusing roads, Colin (at Bradley’s instruction) pulled the car over into a field.

“We’re not going to get anywhere tonight, not with how confusing these roads are.” Said Bradley with a sigh of acceptance.

 

Neither of them were totally sure how they ended up there, but stargazing on the roof of Bradley’s car wasn’t a bad way to pass the night.

It was relatively warm, and the roof was heated from the day’s driving. The stars were magnificent this far away from the pollution of London.

“I don’t mind this so much.” Colin felt Bradley’s own warm body pressed tightly against his own, the roof not being quite wide enough for the both of them. His breath tickled his bare neck when Bradley turned his head to talk to him.

“Considering you’re here, it’s not bad at all.” He paused. “And you’ve been driving well, I mean it. At this rate you could take your test in… 10 years time?” he chuckled at his own joke and jabbed Colin in the side, not a smart move considering Colin’s own elbows were much more pointy and his retaliation was a lot more jabful.

The car creaked a little below them as the metal cooled down and retracted in the evening air. Neither of them were even sure what time it was seeing as Bradley’s iphone had died (Colin pointedly left his at their flat) and the car was turned off to save the battery.

The more Bradley focused, the more stars came into view, sparkling and distant and mysteriously strewn across the darkest of skies. Although, with Colin pressed up against him like this, on the roof of his car of all places, he was having quite a hard time focusing on anything than Colin's warm pressure and the rise and fall of his chest.

“Not sure I’m looking forward to sleeping in a car though.” Admitted Bradley, his car, quite contrastingly to his ego and personality, wasn’t at all the biggest.

It was Colin’s turn to quirk a smile, not that Bradley could see much in the engulphing darkness of the countryside.

“I don’t know if I intend to do much sleeping.”

 

Car sex is awkward. And in more than one instance, the handbrake was somehow or another released and the car began rolling down the hill. Nothing quite breaks the mood like your lover whispering “Shit! The car, get the break!” seductively in your ear. Nevertheless, the two of them woke sleepily at dawn, uncomfortable and sore and wedged in-between seats. 

 

“Shall we start part two of your driving lesson?”


End file.
